When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions, New series on the Discovery Channel Options

[ilbasso]

Just finished watching episodes 1 and 2 of the new Discovery Channel series, "When We Left Earth: The NASA Missions."

WOW!!

Wonderful footage, beautifully restored, and it looks great in HDTV. These first two episodes covered Mercury and Gemini. Subsequent episodes will cover Apollo, Shuttle, and ISS.

Due to time limitations, they didn't cover every mission (Sigma 7, and Geminis V, X, and XI were not mentioned at all). But the missions they did cover included some footage that I have never seen before, and I have been watching these missions on TV since Shepard's flight. Seeing film of Ed White's spacewalk again brought back the sense of wonder and disorientation that I felt the first time I saw it in 1965. I don't believe I ever knew that Gemini VII had been tasked with observing a Polaris missle launch - and they had film of the launch taken from orbit. They also showed film of Gemini VI's approach and rendezvous - I had previously only seen stills from the actual station-keeping with Gemini VII. And I don't recall ever before seeing a movie of Gene Cernan's spacewalk on Gemini IX.

The film clips and narration are supplemented by commentary from many of the astronauts, most surprisingly being Neil Armstrong. He almost NEVER takes part in these kinds of documentaries, so his participation certainly added to the feeling that this was a special show. John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Jim McDivitt, Jim Lovell, Frank Borman, Buzz Aldrin, and Gene Cernan also provided commentary, as did Chris Kraft and Gene Krantz.

If you get Discovery Channel, I strongly suggest you watch this! It's also coming out on DVD and Blu-Ray, with an additional 4 hours of footage.

[nprev]

Just noticed a rather absolute statement about Glenn's flight: "The straps for the retrorockets were the only thing holding the heat shield in place". Was this in fact ever confirmed in post-flight analysis? Have heard conflicting things.

[jmjawors]

I think they answered that within the documentary itself. They said that the heat shield ended up being fine all along, and that it was a faulty switch/sensor (I don't remember which) that ultimately was the culprit.